Under the red star that sits on the ceiling of the Great Hall of the People, on Tiananmen Square, in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping, on Thursday, September 5, rolled out promises to further engage China in Africa. Facing him were some fifty heads of state and government who had come to participate in the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. “The Western path has inflicted deep suffering on developing countries”the Chinese president said, but “China and Africa’s common quest for modernization will bring a wave of progress for the entire Global South”.
Quickly, the strongman of Beijing, who poses as the great defender of this South in its fight against the West, came to concrete announcements, as if to prove that, despite the economic slowdown, Chinese interest in the continent is still as strong. The volume of Chinese loans to Africa peaked in 2016, and fell sharply during the years of the Covid-19 crisis, before picking up again in 2023. By the next Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, in three years, China promises to commit 50 billion dollars (around 45 billion euros) to the continent, including 29 billion euros in credit lines, 11 billion dollars in aid and 10 billion dollars in corporate investments.
In exchange for this generosity, the heads of state who took the podium one after the other, the Senegalese Bassirou Diomaye Faye, the South African Cyril Ramaphosa, the Congolese Denis Sassou Nguesso, the Nigerian Bola Tinubu, the Tanzanian Samia Suluhu Hassan, all thanked China for its solidarity. None of them forgot one of the phrases that counts most in the eyes of Chinese diplomacy, the “one China principle”or their support on the Taiwan issue.
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Because the matter is far from being only economic. The secretary of the Chinese Communist Party had started by listing the initiatives that must make the continent an infallible ally of China and push its model. Beijing intends to launch a “governance experience sharing platform” and open 25 “China and Africa study centers”. A thousand personalities from African political parties will be invited to China for programs on “Party building and state governance”It will also offer 60,000 places in vocational training institutes.
“Job creation”
One of China’s priorities is the security and military rapprochement, which Beijing intends to accelerate, while the People’s Liberation Army has already opened its first base outside its territory, in Djibouti. It plans to train 6,000 soldiers from African countries and a thousand police officers, and wants to increase joint training and patrols.
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